Fibre Channel

Is Storage Really That Different?

July 25, 2007 by Stephen 1 Comment

Cisco’s new product announcements this week got me thinking about our little storage pond. Sure, VFrame isn’t breaking any new ground compared to Scalent, HP’s Opsware, and BladeLogic, but it’ll be a revelation to Cisco’s customers. Remember, all the iPod had going for it was Apple’s brand name, customer base, and flawless execution! The point […]

Toot toot: I’m quoted on SearchStorage

July 23, 2007 by Stephen 1 Comment

Just a quick bit of self-promotion… Stephen Bigelow wrote a nice iSCSI versus Fibre Channel article for SearchStorage, quoting me.

Microsoft’s best-kept secret

June 20, 2007 by Stephen 2 Comments

I’ve said before that Microsoft’s work in the field of enterprise storage was truly remarkable. Every other operating system vendor, as well as the grubby hordes developing Linux and BSD, should be ashamed that the “evil empire” beat them to the punch with great storage ideas like VSS, VDS, and transportable backup integration. Well, it […]

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Ranting and Raving About the 2018 iPad Pro

I remain enthusiastic about the iPad Pro, despite getting a scratched screen and my concerns about durability. It’s a worthy successor to the original and offers enough improvements that I’d recommend the upgrade for just about anyone who uses their iPad for serious work. It’s still not yet a laptop replacement, but this is due more to a lack of desktop-class software for iOS than anything in Apple’s control.

The 2018 iPad Pro is a Beast!

The third-generation iPad Pro is a great machine but also a bellwether of change at Apple. It will be very hard for the rest of the mobile and client computing industry to keep up with this kind of progress!

Datacenter History: Through the Ages in Lego

October 22, 2013

Readers of my blog know that I love computer history. Therefore, I decided to focus my entry in Juniper Networks’ “Build the Best (Lego) Data Center” contest on the history of computing. Specifically, I would re-create key historic machines to contrast them with a modern view.

It’s Time To Move Beyond Passwords (Especially On Web Sites)

January 8, 2016

Sure, single sign-on puts all your eggs in one basket. But this is vastly preferable to trusting that hundreds of third-party baskets are secure, especially when they prove on a weekly basis that they aren’t! It’s time to put distributed passwords behind us and switch to systems like SAML, both for businesses and consumers.

On the Death of Innovation, or “These Kids These Days!”

May 21, 2012

An obnoxious meme has returned to the fore lately, claiming that innovation is dead. The hippies did it, or maybe it was the Internet, or even a decline of America. But nothing could be further from the truth, and statements like this make me question the perspective of the speaker.

Preserving Your Credibility Is Your Prime Directive

June 4, 2012

I hope this post isn’t too “out in left field” but I thought it needed to be said. Independent social media has evolved into a powerful mechanism to influence belief, behavior, and (yes) buying. I take my little dollop of influence very seriously, and feel an incredible responsibility to live up to the trust placed in me by others. I will try every day not to let you all down!

Mac OS X Lion Adds CoreStorage, a Volume Manager (Finally!)

August 4, 2011

Mac OS X was majorly deficient in that it lacked a volume manager. This wouldn’t seem like a big deal to the average user, but held back the operating system in so many ways. A volume manager brings storage virtualization to an operating system, allowing storage capacity efficiently to be managed and manipulated. But all this has changed in Mac OS X 10.7 â€œLionâ€ with CoreStorage.

ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

July 10, 2017

ZFS should have been great, but I kind of hate it: ZFS seems to be trapped in the past, before it was sidelined it as the cool storage project of choice; it’s inflexible; it lacks modern flash integration; and it’s not directly supported by most operating systems. But I put all my valuable data on ZFS because it simply offers the best level of data protection in a small office/home office (SOHO) environment. Here’s why.

New England Takes On Seattle To Determine Who’s Number 2 … In Tech!

January 19, 2015

Although New England ought to win that big football game, they’re losing when it comes to innovation and technology. Seattle and Austin are gaining rapidly, and Massachusetts has itself to blame thanks to oppressive non-compete clauses and the threat of litigation. As for Tech Field Day, look for us to return to Silicon Valley for seven of our nine full events in 2015. At least now you know why!

Here’s Something Your Raspberry Pi Can’t Do: Gigabit Ethernet and SATA in the Olimex A20-OLinuXIno-LIME2

May 25, 2016

I’ve really enjoyed experimenting with the Raspberry Pi, and have even deployed a few as UNIX servers in my home and office network. The quad-core performance of the latest Pi models is awesome, but serious I/O limitations remain. With just one USB 2.0 interface shared for all network and storage operations, you aren’t going to […]